Just started as a brand new beekeeper on March 19, 2011. Bought an established hive and equipment from a friend who had become severely allergic to bee stings. I moved the bees to my place between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. early Saturday morning and done so with only 4 stings, all my fault.

My first encounter with honey bees came when I was 3 year old and I turned over one of my grandfather's hives. Not a very pleasant experience I can tell you. The doctors told momma if I ever got stung again, it would probably kill me. Well, he was wrong as I've been stung dozens of times through the years. Now at age 57, I'm breaking into beekeeping a little more prepared that I was at 3 years and have taken a different approach than the frontal assault I tried way back then.

Looking forward to participating in the forums and hopefully over time be able to contribute something.

When I moved the hive, I separated the top two supers from the brood supers and put a cover on top of both sets. I set them on a piece of plywood in my truck without the bottom board on the hive. I used nylon straps to hold them in place and drove twenty miles to my home.

My friend was not using the "plastic" (is that what it is?) hive stand he purchased from Dadent so I had it set up ahead of time and was ready to set the hive up as soon as I got home.

When I unloaded, I backed my truck so close to my hive stand that I was able to slide the bottom two supers straight off and lower them down directly on my hive stand. The "plastic" hive stand doesn't require a bottom board.

I removed the top cover that I used while transporting the two brood supers, placed a queen excluder over the brood supers and slid the top two honey supers in place over the excluder with the top cover already in place.

I did all the reassembling by myself and if I had to do it over, I'd separate the two brood supers because of the weight involved. It was more of a load than I anticipated when I lowered it to the hive stand.